World Water Day

Dear EDAs and friends, I’m excited to announce today, on World Water Day, that my Project Clean Water partnership with Virgin Unite and the Voss Foundation through the Give a Drop campaign has been very successful bringing clean water to communities in Sub-Saharan Africa- and that is thanks to your help! Since 2009, Give a Drop has funded 6 clean water projects in Mali, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and we’re still working to do even more. Thanks to all of your support, we were just able to fund another new well in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, and I can’t wait to share more about it with you once the project is underway. Every World Water Day, I am reminded how lucky I am – and how lucky we all are in America – to be able to get fresh, clean water in our homes every day. As you all know, I care about access to clean water because when I was homeless, I couldn’t afford to buy the bottled water I needed for my sick kidneys, and I realized if it was so difficult in the United States, it must be a huge problem globally. As a new mother, it is heartbreaking to think of children suffering from this basic human need. Drought is the number one cause of famine and food shortages in developing countries, and has caused more deaths in the past 100 years than any other natural disaster. I couldn’t believe it when I read that! The devastating famines in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel region we keep hearing about in recent years have been caused by droughts, which is why Project Clean Water is working with Virgin Unite and the Voss Foundation to build wells in those exact places. Please join me in the effort to make sure everyone has enough food to eat and water to drink! You can text the message “DROP” to 85944 to make a $5 donation, or visit http://www.giveadrop.com or http://www.thevossfoundation.orgfor more information about our projects.